OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
An ontology-based approach for semantics ranking of the web search engines results
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2012
Year: 2012

This work falls in the areas of information retrieval and semantic web, and aims to improve the evaluation of web search tools. Indeed, the huge number of information on the web as well as the growth of new inexperienced users creates new challenges for information retrieval; certainly the current search engines (such as Google, Bing and Yahoo) offer an efficient way to browse the web content. However, this type of tool does not take into account the semantic driven by the query terms and document words. This paper proposes a new semantic based approach for the evaluation of information retrieval systems; the goal is to increase the selectivity of search tools and to improve how these tools are evaluated. The test of the proposed approach for the evaluation of search engines has proved its applicability to real search tools. The results showed that semantic evaluation is a promising way to improve the performance and behavior of search engines as well as the relevance of the results that they return.
Study: Symmetry breaking for ASP
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2012
Year: 2012

In their nature configuration problems are combinatorial (optimization) problems. In order to find a configuration a solver has to instantiate a number of components of a some type and each of these components can be used in a relation defined for a type. Therefore, many solutions of a configuration problem have symmetric ones which can be obtained by replacing some component of a solution by another one of the same type. These symmetric solutions decrease performance of optimization algorithms because of two reasons: a) they satisfy all requirements and cannot be pruned out from the search space; and b) existence of symmetric optimal solutions does not allow to prove the optimum in a feasible time.
A Universal upper bound on Graph Diameter based on Laplacian Eigenvalues
Venue: arXiv cs.DM 2012
Year: 2012

We prove that the diameter of any unweighted connected graph G is O(k log n/lambda_k), for any k>= 2. Here, lambda_k is the k smallest eigenvalue of the normalized laplacian of G. This solves a problem posed by Gil Kalai.
Formal Design and Verification of N-M Switching Control System
Venue: arXiv cs.LO 2012
Year: 2012

Production factories in which stable voltage is critical, e.g., electro-plating factory, require constantly stable voltage to minimize loss by adjusting incoming voltage in real time, even if low-quality electricity is supplied from outside. To solve such problem often being raised from the factories located in the area with unstable electricity supply, we designed N-M switching control system and verified its correctness using LTL model checking technique.
Understanding (dis)similarity measures
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2012
Year: 2012

Intuitively, the concept of similarity is the notion to measure an inexact matching between two entities of the same reference set. The notions of similarity and its close relative dissimilarity are widely used in many fields of Artificial Intelligence. Yet they have many different and often partial definitions or properties, usually restricted to one field of application and thus incompatible with other uses. This paper contributes to the design and understanding of similarity and dissimilarity measures for Artificial Intelligence. A formal dual definition for each concept is proposed, joined with a set of fundamental properties. The behavior of the properties under several transformations is studied and revealed as an important matter to bear in mind. We also develop several practical examples that work out the proposed approach.
Tracking Revisited using RGBD Camera: Baseline and Benchmark
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2012
Year: 2012

Although there has been significant progress in the past decade,tracking is still a very challenging computer vision task, due to problems such as occlusion and model drift.Recently, the increased popularity of depth sensors e.g. Microsoft Kinect has made it easy to obtain depth data at low cost.This may be a game changer for tracking, since depth information can be used to prevent model drift and handle occlusion.In this paper, we construct a benchmark dataset of 100 RGBD videos with high diversity, including deformable objects, various occlusion conditions and moving cameras. We propose a very simple but strong baseline model for RGBD tracking, and present a quantitative comparison of several state-of-the-art tracking algorithms.Experimental results show that including depth information and reasoning about occlusion significantly improves tracking performance. The datasets, evaluation details, source code for the baseline algorithm, and instructions for submitting new models will be made available online after acceptance.
Dynamic Simulation of Soft Heterogeneous Objects
Venue: arXiv cs.GR 2012
Year: 2012

This paper describes a 2D and 3D simulation engine that quantitatively models the statics, dynamics, and non-linear deformation of heterogeneous soft bodies in a computationally efficient manner. There is a large body of work simulating compliant mechanisms. These normally assume small deformations with homogeneous material properties actuated with external forces. There is also a large body of research on physically-based deformable objects for applications in computer graphics with the purpose of generating realistic appearances at the expense of accuracy. Here we present a simulation framework in which an object may be composed of any number of interspersed materials with varying properties (stiffness, density, etc.) to enable true heterogeneous multi-material simulation. Collisions are handled to prevent self-penetration due to large deformation, which also allows multiple bodies to interact. A volumetric actuation method is implemented to impart motion to the structures which opens the door to the design of novel structures and mechanisms. The simulator was implemented efficiently such that objects with thousands of degrees of freedom can be simulated at suitable framerates for user interaction using a single thread of a typical desktop computer. The code is written in platform agnostic C++ and is fully open source. This research opens the door to the dynamic simulation of freeform 3D multi-material mechanisms and objects in a manner suitable for design automation.
Pituitary Adenoma Volumetry with 3D Slicer
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2012
Year: 2012

In this study, we present pituitary adenoma volumetry using the free and open source medical image computing platform for biomedical research: (3D) Slicer. Volumetric changes in cerebral pathologies like pituitary adenomas are a critical factor in treatment decisions by physicians and in general the volume is acquired manually. Therefore, manual slice-by-slice segmentations in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data, which have been obtained at regular intervals, are performed. In contrast to this manual time consuming slice-by-slice segmentation process Slicer is an alternative which can be significantly faster and less user intensive. In this contribution, we compare pure manual segmentations of ten pituitary adenomas with semi-automatic segmentations under Slicer. Thus, physicians drew the boundaries completely manually on a slice-by-slice basis and performed a Slicer-enhanced segmentation using the competitive region-growing based module of Slicer named GrowCut. Results showed that the time and user effort required for GrowCut-based segmentations were on average about thirty percent less than the pure manual segmentations. Furthermore, we calculated the Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) between the manual and the Slicer-based segmentations to proof that the two are comparable yielding an average DSC of 81.97\pm3.39%.
Communication Learning in Social Networks: Finite Population and the Rates
Venue: arXiv cs.SI 2012
Year: 2012

Following the Bayesian communication learning paradigm, we propose a finite population learning concept to capture the level of information aggregation in any given network, where agents are allowed to communicate with neighbors repeatedly before making a single decision. This concept helps determine the occurrence of effective information aggregation in a finite network and reveals explicit interplays among parameters. It also enables meaningful comparative statics regarding the effectiveness of information aggregation in networks. Moreover, it offers a solid foundation to address, with a new perfect learning concept, long run dynamics of learning behavior and the associated learning rates as population diverges. Our conditions for the occurrence of finite population learning and perfect learning in communication networks are very tractable and transparent.
On beta-skeleton automata with memory
Venue: arXiv cs.ET 2012
Year: 2012

A β-skeleton is a proximity undirected graph whose connectivity is determined by the parameter β. We study β-skeleton automata where every node is a finite state machine taking two states, and updating its states depending on the states of adjacent automata-nodes. We allow automata-nodes to remember their previous states. In computational experiments we study how memory affects the global space-time dynamics on β-skeleton automata.
Multi-target tracking algorithms in 3D
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2012
Year: 2012

Ladars provide a unique capability for identification of objects and motions in scenes with fixed 3D field of view (FOV). This paper describes algorithms for multi-target tracking in 3D scenes including the preprocessing (mathematical morphology and Parzen windows), labeling of connected components, sorting of targets by selectable attributes (size, length of track, velocity), and handling of target states (acquired, coasting, re-acquired and tracked) in order to assemble the target trajectories. This paper is derived from working algorithms coded in Matlab, which were tested and reviewed by others, and does not speculate about usage of general formulas or frameworks.
Identification of efficient peers in P2P computing system for real time applications
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2012
Year: 2012

Currently the Peer to Peer computing paradigm rises as an economic solution for the large scale computation problems. However due to the dynamic nature of peers it is very difficult to use this type of systems for the computations of real time applications. Strict deadline of scientific and real time applications require predictable performance in such applications. We propose an algorithm to identify the group of reliable peers, from the available peers on the Internet, for the processing of real time applications tasks. The algorithm is based on joint evaluation of peer properties like peer availability, credibility, computation time and the turnaround time of the peer with respect to the task distributor peer. Here we also define a method to calculate turnaround time on task distributor peers at application level.
Matrix Design for Optimal Sensing
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2012
Year: 2012

We design optimal $2 \times N$ ($2 <N$) matrices, with unit columns, so that the maximum condition number of all the submatrices comprising 3 columns is minimized. The problem has two applications. When estimating a 2-dimensional signal by using only three of $N$ observations at a given time, this minimizes the worst-case achievable estimation error. It also captures the problem of optimum sensor placement for monitoring a source located in a plane, when only a minimum number of required sensors are active at any given time. For arbitrary $N\geq3$, we derive the optimal matrices which minimize the maximum condition number of all the submatrices of three columns. Surprisingly, a uniform distribution of the columns is \emph{not} the optimal design for odd $N\geq 7$.
A Novel Directional Weighted Minimum Deviation (DWMD) Based Filter for Removal of Random Valued Impulse Noise
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2012
Year: 2012

The most median-based de noising methods works fine for restoring the images corrupted by Randomn Valued Impulse Noise with low noise level but very poor with highly corrupted images. In this paper a directional weighted minimum deviation (DWMD) based filter has been proposed for removal of high random valued impulse noise (RVIN). The proposed approach based on Standard Deviation (SD) works in two phases. The first phase detects the contaminated pixels by differencing between the test pixel and its neighbor pixels aligned with four main directions. The second phase filters only those pixels keeping others intact. The filtering scheme is based on minimum standard deviation of the four directional pixels. Extensive simulations show that the proposed filter not only provide better performance of de noising RVIN but can preserve more details features even thin lines or dots. This technique shows better performance in terms of PSNR, Image Fidelity and Computational Cost compared to the existing filters.
Know Your Personalization: Learning Topic level Personalization in Online Services
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2012
Year: 2012

Online service platforms (OSPs), such as search engines, news-websites, ad-providers, etc., serve highly pe rsonalized content to the user, based on the profile extracted from his history with the OSP. Although personalization (generally) leads to a better user experience, it also raises privacy concerns for the user---he does not know what is present in his profile and more importantly, what is being used to per sonalize content for him. In this paper, we capture OSP's personalization for an user in a new data structure called the person alization vector ($η$), which is a weighted vector over a set of topics, and present techniques to compute it for users of an OSP. Our approach treats OSPs as black-boxes, and extracts $η$ by mining only their output, specifical ly, the personalized (for an user) and vanilla (without any user information) contents served, and the differences in these content. We formulate a new model called Latent Topic Personalization (LTP) that captures the personalization vector into a learning framework and present efficient inference algorithms for it. We do extensive experiments for search result personalization using both data from real Google users and synthetic datasets. Our results show high accuracy (R-pre = 84%) of LTP in finding personalized topics. For Google data, our qualitative results show how LTP can also identifies evidences---queries for results on a topic with high $η$ value were re-ranked. Finally, we show how our approach can be used to build a new Privacy evaluation framework focused at end-user privacy on commercial OSPs.
Implicit Lyapunov Control for the Quantum Liouville Equation
Venue: arXiv cs.SY 2012
Year: 2012

A quantum system whose internal Hamiltonian is not strongly regular or/and control Hamiltonians are not full connected, are thought to be in the degenerate cases. In this paper, convergence problems of the multi-control Hamiltonians closed quantum systems in the degenerate cases are solved by introducing implicit function perturbations and choosing an implicit Lyapunov function based on the average value of an imaginary mechanical quantity. For the diagonal and non-diagonal tar-get states, respectively, control laws are designed. The convergence of the control system is proved, and an explicit design principle of the imaginary mechanical quantity is proposed. By using the proposed method, the multi-control Hamiltonians closed quantum systems in the degenerate cases can converge from any initial state to an arbitrary target state unitarily equivalent to the initial state. Finally, numerical simulations are studied to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control method.
A note on the product homomorphism problem and CQ-definability
Venue: arXiv cs.DM 2012
Year: 2012

The product homomorphism problem (PHP) takes as input a finite collection of relational structures A1, ..., An and another relational structure B, all over the same schema, and asks whether there is a homomorphism from the direct product A1 x ... x An to B. This problem is clearly solvable in non-deterministic exponential time. It follows from results in [1] that the problem is NExpTime-complete. The proof, based on a reduction from an exponential tiling problem, uses structures of bounded domain size but with relations of unbounded arity. In this note, we provide a self-contained proof of NExpTime-hardness of PHP, and we show that it holds already for directed graphs, as well as for structures of bounded arity with a bounded domain size (but without a bound on the number of relations). We also present an application to the CQ-definability problem (also known as the PP-definability problem). [1] Ross Willard. Testing expressibility is hard. In David Cohen, editor, CP, volume 6308 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 9-23. Springer, 2010.
Cluster-based Transform Domain Communication Systems for High Spectrum Efficiency
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2012
Year: 2012

This paper presents a cluster-based transform domain communication system (TDCS) to improve spectrum efficiency. Unlike the utilities of clusters in orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM) systems, the cluster-based TDCS framework divides entire unoccupied spectrum bins into $L$ clusters, where each one represents a data steam independently, to achieve $L$ times of spectrum efficiency compared to that of the traditional one. Among various schemes of spectrum bin spacing and allocation, the TDCS with random allocation scheme appears to be an ideal candidate to significantly improve spectrum efficiency without seriously degrading power efficiency. In multipath fading channel, the coded TDCS with random allocation scheme achieves robust BER performance due to a large degree of frequency diversity. Furthermore, our study shows that the smaller spectrum bin spacing should be configured for the cluster-based TDCS to achieve higher spectrum efficiency and more robust BER performance.
The Arduino as a Hardware Random-Number Generator
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2012
Year: 2012

Cheap micro-controllers, such as the Arduino or other controllers based on the Atmel AVR CPUs are being deployed in a wide variety of projects, ranging from sensors networks to robotic submarines. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of using the Arduino as a true random number generator (TRNG). The Arduino Reference Manual recommends using it to seed a pseudo random number generator (PRNG) due to its ability to read random atmospheric noise from its analog pins. This is an enticing application since true bits of entropy are hard to come by. Unfortunately, we show by statistical methods that the atmospheric noise of an Arduino is largely predictable in a variety of settings, and is thus a weak source of entropy. We explore various methods to extract true randomness from the micro-controller and conclude that it should not be used to produce randomness from its analog pins.
Interactive verification of Markov chains: Two distributed protocol case studies
Venue: arXiv cs.LO 2012
Year: 2012

Probabilistic model checkers like PRISM only check probabilistic systems of a fixed size. To guarantee the desired properties for an arbitrary size, mathematical analysis is necessary. We show for two case studies how this can be done in the interactive proof assistant Isabelle/HOL. The first case study is a detailed description of how we verified properties of the ZeroConf protocol, a decentral address allocation protocol. The second case study shows the more involved verification of anonymity properties of the Crowds protocol, an anonymizing protocol.
Adding Time to Pushdown Automata
Venue: arXiv cs.LO 2012
Year: 2012

In this tutorial, we illustrate through examples how we can combine two classical models, namely those of pushdown automata (PDA) and timed automata, in order to obtain timed pushdown automata (TPDA). Furthermore, we describe how the reachability problem for TPDAs can be reduced to the reachability problem for PDAs.
Building ventilation: A pressure airflow model computer generation and elements of validation
Venue: arXiv cs.CE 2012
Year: 2012

The calculation of airflows is of great importance for detailed building thermal simulation computer codes, these airflows most frequently constituting an important thermal coupling between the building and the outside on one hand, and the different thermal zones on the other. The driving effects of air movement, which are the wind and the thermal buoyancy, are briefly outlined and we look closely at their coupling in the case of buildings, by exploring the difficulties associated with large openings. Some numerical problems tied to the resolving of the non-linear system established are also covered. Part of a detailled simulation software (CODYRUN), the numerical implementation of this airflow model is explained, insisting on data organization and processing allowing the calculation of the airflows. Comparisons are then made between the model results and in one hand analytical expressions and in another and experimental measurements in case of a collective dwelling.
Detailed weather data generator for building simulations
Venue: arXiv cs.CE 2012
Year: 2012

Thermal buildings simulation softwares need meteorological files in thermal comfort, energetic evaluation studies. Few tools can make significant meteorological data available such as generated typical year, representative days, or artificial meteorological database. This paper deals about the presentation of a new software, RUNEOLE, used to provide weather data in buildings applications with a method adapted to all kind of climates. RUNEOLE associates three modules of description, modelling and generation of weather data. The statistical description of an existing meteorological database makes typical representative days available and leads to the creation of model libraries. The generation module leads to the generation of non existing sequences. This software tends to be usable for the searchers and designers, by means of interactivity, facilitated use and easy communication. The conceptual basis of this tool will be exposed and we'll propose two examples of applications in building physics for tropical humid climates.
On Probability of Link Availability in Original and Modified AODV, FSR and OLSR Using 802.11 and 802.11p
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2012
Year: 2012

Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks (MANETs) comprise on wireless mobile nodes that are communicating with each other without any infrastructure. Vehicular Ad-hoc NETwork (VANET) is a special type of MANETs in which vehicles with high mobility need to communicate with each other. In this paper, we present a novel framework for link availability of paths for static as well as dynamic networks. Moreover, we evaluate our frame work for routing protocols performance with different number of nodes in MANETs and in VANETs. We select three routing protocols namely Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV), Fish-eye State Routing (FSR) and Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR). Furthermore, we have also modified default parameters of selected protocols to check their efficiencies. Performance of these protocols is analyzed using three performance metrics; Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), Normalized Routing Overhead (NRO) and End-to-End Delay (E2ED) against varying scalabilities of nodes. We perform these simulations with NS-2 using TwoRayGround propagation model. The SUMO simulator is used to generate a random mobility pattern for VANETs. From the extensive simulations, we observe that AODV outperforms among all three protocols.